Disclaimer: I have not seen the lore of the new patch, let’s hope it will be better.
So as someone who used to always follow the story, I have never been so disconnected from it. In Shadowlands I followed it even though I hated it, now I almost don’t bother at all with it. In fact, I have not bothered to do any of the campaigns with Ysera and whatnot.
The reason for that is that the lore has become boring. There are fun little side quests here and there, but they are exactly that- side quests.
Starting with the theme:
As others have said, I think the whole theme of Dragonflight got boring real fast. And I think this was obvious from the trailer.
In Legion, you had this really exciting invasion in the Broken Isles.
In BFA (although it turned out to be an absolute mess) the idea of invading Lordaeron and everything was interesting.
Shadowlands looked pretty cool from the trailers - which it actually was not - because the themes were clear, even though they turned out to be
I feel like Dragonflight did not show any specific story. It was just like: “Woohoo dragons yay!”. And it stayed that way. The whole incarnates thing is mildly interesting but… I feel like the story is not very exciting.
Now for the characters:
There are no interesting characters with screen presence like Varian or Garrosh that you can get invested in. Characters who were like that have been watered downcough Bolvar cough
Most characters are now either boring or they look and behave like emo teenagers who watch too much anime. I feel like the writers are playing it way too safe.
Basically, that’s the thing. They are playing it too safe. No taking risks to create interesting stories and fun characters.
Here’s hoping they improve.
We have to understand that Dragonflight is a massive calm-down period after all the excitement we’ve had since, effectively, Mists of Pandaria.
The theme of the expansion is exploration and being in this new world, rather than being action-packed and going from one set piece to another. If anything, it’s mellow enough to not be risky - which is a good thing!
We don’t need constant world-ending threats and action. We’re part of the World of Warcraft, after all. We’re experiencing that world.
That being said, we do seem to be heading towards something. I’d be worried if it is the Void again, cos “twist” final story themes late into an expansion has never really worked in the favour of Blizzard.
They are playing too safe with the characters. Even if we are exploring, we could do with some hot heads or emotive Heroes. Not some soft, wimpy ooey-gooey like Anduin though. Genuine strength and life, from either side.
What I’d worry about is that the “playing safe” isn’t exactly coordinated and Blizzard are just as blind to decent story as ever. They’ll screw up the crescendo for sure.
Yeah I mean Mists of Pandaria’s lore was excellent. And it seems like in the sense of exploration Dragonflight is trying to do the same thing. The problem I have with it, if that’s the case, is that Dragonflight is the walmart version of MoP.
i’d already stopped caring if nozdormu wasn’t acting weird, the rest is so boring and irrelevant that i can’t even explain how bored i am at all those cutscenes. coming from an expansion that was filled with old characters that we knew and that had hated storyline, i know they wanted something fresh but this wasn’t it for me
The problem is that they kept building and building and building between Legion and SL.
After all that Lore in Legion with some of the biggest names in the game’s history we should have had a quieter expansion to build some new tension for another big lore heavy expansion. Instead we get the burning of Teldrassil, N’Zoth, Azshara and the Naga as well as the “Faction Conflict” (which should have been the main story).
And where do we go from there? Another world ending mega-bad.
A lighter expansion can be good between major mega lore heavy expansions.
MOP was well recieved (once folk got over their Kung Fu Panda aversion) and is still well regarded today.
Dragonflight being a lighter expansion is a good thing for the game but it comes after Legion, BFA and SL all being very heavy expansions (and you could almost put WoD in that list) makes it feel like weak sauce.
I agree to an extent, but I think this goes beyond just being a lighter concept than the last three expansions. As both I and the chad orc said earlier, they are playing too safe with the characters, to the extent that they’re all pretty much boring. Only Wrathion, Sabellian and Nozdormu are kind of engaging. The others are just not.
I’ve not really seen what Dadgar does in this expansion, but I feel like he is not exactly a main character anymore.
I think it’s still quite early. First patch of Legion had no Illidan nor Kill Jaeden nor Argus etc. All we had was Emerald Nightmare and a dungeon with Odyn.
Yes, but we had good main characters. Khadgar and the rest made up for a good cast of NPCs that kept the story moving without making it boring. And I think Dragonflight is lacking that kind of thing.
Yeah, the characters are lackluster so far.
Also there have been too many kids quests. Helping kids feed a lost shaggy dog or similar. One or two of these would be ok but it feels like every other quest is helping some kid get their kite out of a tree.
Well, Mists of Pandaria was not exactly a world ending threat, it was a calm down period too, but the cast of characters was amazing. The thing with DF is that its characters are bland.
And I think that having an expansion like this once in awhile is ultimately good for the lore. Not only is it a pallet-cleanser (and no I don’t refer to this insultingly), it also gives the story devs the opportunity to lay some groundwork for future stories. Introduce new characters, focus on the smaller things, worldbuilding, etc.
What I will say is even if the DF story is less bombastic, I really appreciate that the villains of this story have so much more nuance than many before them. I often feel like I am fighting for the wrong side–and this is good! The Incarnates have very clear and understandable motivations, which is a far cry from whatever we got with Zovaal. They’re also far less two-dimensional than Gul’dan.
how can you say you dont like the lore when you have not played the story >? and the story is great btw come back and comment after playing the campaign N zoth is not dead btw
This seems to be the super-majority sentiment of the fanbase (myself included). “Oh no he’s corrupted” is tired and expired as a villainous motivation. “Oh no, he’s doing evil things but he kind of has a point” is much more grounded, dramatic, and engaging.
I do agree with OP a little here, but I have to say I dont mind. I can appreciate how slow it is at the moment. Bringing in a friend to wow right now, and it surely helps that things are a bit calm in the lore department. Don’t get me wrong, to a new player, its still an overwhelming amount of stuff to read up on just to get a the gist of the story that we are seeing so far - but my god am I glad I didn’t bring my friend into this in the middle of shadowlands. Realms between realms with this Good but also evil Sylvanas lady who is dead but also alive, who we think is good but seems evil, and… You get the point
You want the cinnematic “gusto” that BFA and (start of) SL had for you to now be interested in the lore? Because thats about all those 2 expansions had lorewise, great cinnematics (and animated shorts). They created great hype but thats about it and should have given you a great lesson to be weary of “tze hype”.
Would be great if they could have an expansion that had both hype and DF-rollout but i think they need to rebuild some of it to actually get there again. To make new main chars or build up old ones to fill the shoes of Garrosh, Sylvanas, Varian, Arthas etc.
Exactly! So far in recent WoW history, we’ve seen the rise and fall of the Iron Horde, the biggest Legion invasion in history, a Faction War, the introduction/reveal of two Old Gods and their downfalls; and then the introduction and downfall of a really “devil” allegory.
It’s all been sped through at breakneck speed. We really need to calm things down or else nothing introduced will really be that impactful.
TBC, WotLK and even Cata had the benefit of long-standing lore behind them. MoP was quiet and its Big Bad turned out to be in the making since expansion earlier.
After that, everything has been brand new. It’s great to have interesting things in the story and have stuff to do, but if you make everything so temporary then there’s little to build on with.
For Zovaal, it wasn’t even that. He just had absolutely nothing and the writers tried “fixing” this by giving him credit for everything before and everything never written yet. It’s lame.
In fairness, Shadowlands actually did have a supposedly decent story six months before launch that was scrapped. Zovaal was meant to be trying to build an army to fight off the Void but the anarchy he had started was causing the four covenants to war against each other.
If they had actually gone with that, and maybe given Zovaal some self-awareness and empathy to what he is doing, then he’d have been a lot more engaging! Imagine a villain that understands that why you are fighting against him and that the fallout from his isn’t the best. He is only a villain because of his actions, but his goals are the saving of the world.
Non of this about “you don’t understand” or “everything is going to plan, no matter how many set-backs or issues arise” or whatever. Actually give us sensible villains. Smart and adaptable.
